The Angel of Death Passes Over Twice
by Dear Abbie
Summary: Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp, is up and running...But this time, they're killing mutants instead of Jews..New chapter!.
1. Default Chapter

E-mail: [Abbadon_13@yahoo.com][1]

I don't own the X-Men. **Marvel Comics** does......yaddyaddayadda.

  
  
**The Angel of Death Passes Over Twice**   
  
  
  
  
  


The TV was blaring in the entertainment room. Kitty was watching her favorite show and eating ice cream, relishing in the creamy texture. She was just about to take another bite of the confection when she saw the silent alarm light go on and heard the front door blow open. Expecting an attack, she dropped her spoon into her bowl with a clatter and ran out into the hall.

  
  


"SCOTT! JEAN! LOGAN! THE ALARM!"

  
  


Logan was already running up the stairs ahead of her, his claws glinting in the flourescent lights of the stairwell. His senses were reeling. "Kitten, stay back!" he barked, his nostrils flaring, catching a dreadfully familiar scent. "Oh, he's a dead man....."he trailed off, climbing the stairs at a cat-like gait, two at a time. 

  
  


He reached the top of the stairs and saw the owner of the unique smell. Magneto was standing in the main hall, red-faced, but not from anger, his jaw set in determination. He was looking around desperately for anyone, and then he saw Logan, and he backed up a step in spite of himself. Logan was seething, his foot-long, adamantium laced maulers bared. He knew that Logan wanted him dead.

  
  


"Refrigerator Magnet Bastard," Logan spat, "Did you come here to take my metal again? You'll have a hell of a time gettin' it this time!"

  
  


_Logan, Stop!_: The professor commanded telepathically: _He did not come to fight!_ _I sense an urgency, something is wrong, he really needs...._:

  
  


He was cut off. "Auschwitz." Magnus panted, the color of his face still a breathless red. He gulped, panted, "Auschwitz and Birkenau. The Nazis....The death camps, Oh, lord. They're taking mutants in Germany to the death camps...!"

  
  


Scott and Jean appeared, alerted by the professor and Kitty's cries. They stood and watched Magnus pant, and lean against the wall coughing, exhausted, emotional. Jean saw and felt his need, his sadness, and saw the hopeless look in his eyes.

  
  


Magnus struggled to recover. "Please, for God's sake....help me save them."

  
  


Scott swallowed hard, a muscle in his jaw jumped. He heard Jean's presence in his head: _I think he's genuine, Scott. He's really serious._ _He came for help. He flew all the way here.....to find us._

  
  


Scott made the decision, "Jean, go get the team... we're going to have to make a trip to Poland."

  
  


* * * *

  
  


"Rogue, Storm, Gambit, and Wol-- maybe not Wolverine... Scratch that. Rogue, Storm, Gambit, and Magneto, we're going to need you to get the prisoners out of there. You're Team A.. Jean, Kitty, Wolverine, and I will try to break down the operation from the inside. We'll be Team B," Cyclops briefed.

  
  


"Do any of you speak German?" Magnus asked.

  
  


"Well, um, I took some in high school....but.." Cyclops was puzzled, but the professor interviened: _I will translate for you via Jean. Do not worry.:_

  
  


Kitty was eerily silent. She stood by Logan, fingering her golden necklace: a Star of David. She finally spoke up, "I've studied the Holocaust. Birkenau and Auschwitz are only about four miles apart. We can cover both of them, can't we?"

  
  


Jean could tell how bothered Kitty was. As a Jew, Kitty had probably heard the horror stories of the Auschwitz camps. Especially about the crematorium, where nearly 4, 750 people were incinerated per day. She looked also at Magnus, who was once Eric Lensherr, a Jewish-raised man who survived the horror of the Holocaust. It was painful to look at the proud man's face now: he looked so frightened and vulnerable...he was once again facing the monster that haunted his dreams almost every night. She wondered what he had seen. She quietly slipped into his mind..........

  
  


* She could see the stone wall of the barracks at his death camp, and the toothy grins of middle aged men, all looking far older than they really were and far more skeletal. Distantly a man a German shout could be heard, and then a gunshot. Magnus' memory blurred again, this time, to the last time he saw his mother and sister, being lead away into the "showers" by the Nazis to be killed by the gas chambers and then cremated. His mother had mouthed, " I love you" to him as she disappeared into the white-washed building. His sister was crying as she followed behind, holding her mother's hand.....* 

  
  


Jean could not watch further. She had already invaded this man's private thoughts and memories, and she did not wish to see any more. The banking of the Blackbird was enough to jar her to her senses. They were coming in for a landing in the hills near a killing machine.

  
  


* * * * *

  
  


_Cracow, Poland._

  
  


Logan wrinkled his nose as the stench of death assailed him. The very prairie was covered with the smell, sometimes old and well established, steeped into the ground, sometimes there was a new stench, lingering in the air. He went with the team as they snuck up onto the rusted gates of Auschwitz, the main camp. He saw Magneto gulp as he read the German in the wrought-iron gate: "Arbeit Macht Frei."

"Work Liberates," Magnus translated. "Another Nazi lie--no one left this camp free."

"SHHHHh!" Rogue hissed, "I hear someone comin!"

A guard was making his rounds. As he approached the gate, Logan unsheathed his claws and caught them in the guard's collar through the bars of the gate. He yanked him towards the gate, forcing the frightened man's face into the rusted, once black iron. 

"Tell your boss "hello" for me..........." Logan forcefully punched his lights out. "Or maybe I should leave a message." He ripped open the lock on the gate, "Come on."

Jean, Cyclops, and Kitty stepped through, followed by Rouge, Gambit, Storm, then Magneto, who tried to keep his distance from Logan. Cyclops watched as Team A departed to the custody camps where the prisoners were held, Gambit and Storm were already stalking silently over to a barrack. Rogue and Magneto hovered behind, quiet and alert, watching for a guard.

Kitty looked confused, she didn't know her way around. Jean looked equally clueless. 

"I think that they're in that old industrial plant," said Logan. "Watch it, though, cause I have a feeling that someone's watching us."

Kitty volunteered to check in the nearby buildings for officers, Cyclops assented, and she phased through several buildings, finding only unarmed workers in most of the offices. All were wearing a particular black uniform with a new version of the Swastika on the breast pocket. Finally, she moved into an officer's quarters in the back of the office, and saw a heavily armed officer occupying a study chair. She quickly phased back through the wall and caught up with Logan. 

"You just came out of an officer's quarters. Was anyone home?" Logan asked.

"Yeah, and we better be awfully quiet," Kitty whispered. She surveyed the landscape as her mind suddenly tugged thoughts out of the back of her mind, '_How did Logan know that was an officer's quarters? And how was he so sure that the Nazis were in the industrial plant?'_

* * * * *

*

*My first Fiction in a while, I'll continue this as soon as school is out! I Hate 8th grade. Anyway, R&R please.

   [1]: mailto:Abbadon_13@yahoo.com



	2. Bringing Down Birkenau

**Part Two**: Breaking down Birkenau

  
  


* * * * *

  
  


**T**eam B quickly made their way to the old industrial plant at the far east side of Auschwitz in an old ghost-town of a suburb called Monowitz. The building was old and was covered in rusty, painted metal siding. Black paint covered an old wooden sign driven into the ground with a stake. The paint spelled _IG-Farben. _

  
  


Logan sniffed, "Does anyone else smell old burning rubber?"

  
  


"This used to be an old rubber plant, Logan. The SS used to force the death camp prisoners to work here as cheap slaves," Kitty replied, then she fell silent again, watching Jean's face...She was wrinkling her brow like she was sensing something.

  
  


Suddenly, they all heard a shout. Someone on the grounds had spotted them. An angry young man in a black uniform ran towards them, his .357 magnum glinting in the air, pointing straight at Kitty. He yelled a command at them in German, and Jean quickly yelled back an answer in his own language. 

  
  


"He's telling us to get back to work," Jean said.

  
  


"Tell him we're not on the payroll," Logan hissed, bearing his claws with an audible sibilance. 

  
  


The guard's eyes grew wide with terror. He shakily raised his gun to fire, but Logan swiped the barrel of the gun with his claws and sliced through the ammunition chamber and a few bullets fell to the ground. The guard dropped the gun and ran hastily into the industrial plant. Logan made to follow. 

  
  


"Get ready for a fight," he warned, scurrying up the ramp.

  
  


Cyclops put his hand to the side of his visor, ready to open it on the next person to leave the building. Jean prepared herself for a psychological attack. Kitty stood in the middle of the team, ready to grab them and phase them so that they wouldn't be harmed by the onslaught of bullets.

The team tensed as they heard shouts in German from the inside of the building and the menacing sound of the loading of several guns.

  
  


* * * * *

  
  
  
  


Gambit pulled Rogue quickly into the shadows behind the preparation barrack by the "Rampe "in Birkenau. A large van, the windows blacked out with dark paper, came into view. It stopped in front of the barracks and two guards got out of the driver and passenger side of the vehicle, shouldered their rifles, and opened the doors. They barked orders in German as mottled shadows came out of the packed, seatless van. The prisoners filed out at a lethargic pace, trying their legs after riding in the van for several hours. Some of the prisoners looked normal, others were definitely mutants with strange features. All of them were ill-looking, pasty, and wearing wicked looking collars around their necks.

  
  


"That must be how they control dem, chere," Gambit whispered, "Those collars are jest like they made muties wear on Genosha, 'cept those bad-boys look like dey hurt."

Indeed, the collars did appear to hurt. Technological wires were somehow inserted into the neck at the base of the skull, and the outside of the three-inch-wide collars were covered in sharp spikes to discourage removal. 

  
  


Rogue watched with wide green eyes as they pulled prisoners out of the cramped van like clowns in a tiny car. She watched Gambit's face for a reaction as they pulled several children out of the van. She was not disappointed. Gambit's brow creased and his eyes flashed with an inner flame as the children were yelled at by the guards and pulled away from their parents.

  
  


"Remy, where will they take 'em?" Rogue asked.

  
  


A low, masculine voice from behind Rogue said, "They'll take them to the 'showers' along with the rest of the elderly, most of the women, and the invalids."

  
  


Rogue looked over her shoulder at the source of the voice, "The 'showers'? Magnus, you say that like it's a bad thang."

  
  


Magneto closed his eyes knowingly, "They'll fill the showers with nerve toxin, and yes, that is a bad thing."

  
  


"By the goddess," Storm winced inwardly, and swallowed hard, "what can we do?"

  
  


"We're just gonna have to make ourselves known, chere. And den we can get save those chillun."

  
  


* * * * *

  
  


A charge was being lead as men filed out of the IG-Farben plant. All were holding military-issue weapons, including rifles, Luger pistols, Winchester repeaters, and even a Gatling gun. Despite the heavy weaponry, Wolverine was not about to back down. He lunged toward the first line growling and grunting as he slashed into weapon after weapon, sometimes using his impenetrable claws to block a shot. His team was behind him, now a little worried, in a protective circle formation. 

"Well, we've certainly lost our element of surprise," Jean murmured as she concentrated her psychic shield around Kitty and Scott. The shield was an aura of blue energy, a bright light that enveloped the X-men like a womb, even sealing out some of the sounds of the battle. It also kept the team from being able to fight back.

"Jean, I can't fight with this shield!" Cyclops complained, frantically trying to blast at the guards with his eye beam. Kitty grabbed him and phased him half-in-half-out of Jean's glowing shield. Cyclops then opened fire, using a concussive-strength blast. The IG-Farben men started to fall, blasted unconscious or temporarily blinded, and the rest began to fall back as Logan ripped into their weapons. 

Logan was growling, snorting like an animal, breaking and slicing through expensive weaponry and sometimes even the unlucky guard. Some of the black-clad Nazis weren't easily stopped, however. Once they lost their gun, they would attack with fists and the butt of their now-ruined firearms. Wolverine was not looking as one man jammed him in the temple with the butt of his rifle. He was knocked out cold, and he fell among a scrambling, shouting pile of soldiers who began to pummel his unmoving form.

Jean dropped her shield and ran into the battle, trying to get to Logan using her still-blooming powers to telekinetically blast the Neo-Nazis back. They fell, only after Jean's psychological suggestion that they were unconscious or gravely injured, although they weren't. As she neared Logan, she saw that Kitty was already there. She was phasing Wolverine to keep him from getting shot as Cyclops attempted to keep the soldiers from beating Logan to death. Holding his head in her hands, Kitty was startled to feel the stickiness of blood in Wolverine's dark hair near a purpling bruise on his temporal vein.

* * * * *

  
  
  
  


It's short, I know, but what can I do? Here's some news as to why my fics come out so short and it takes so long: 1) I'm still recovering from 8th grade. 2) I have just rescued a baby bunny, who needs lots of attention, and 3) It takes forever to research Auschwitz.....too many sites in German or foreign languages!

That's all for now, R&R please!


End file.
